A print copy of this blog's greatest hits is in the final stages. I hired an editor through Reedsy to format the book for IngramSpark submission - I just couldn't figure out getting the gutters aligned! - both paperback and eBook, and I already had the cover done through Fiverr. Should see the book on the market mid-May, just as I'll be heading to the FLA annual conference. We'll see how it goes ..read more

Several things on my mind this Sunday: The vote yesterday by the Republican-controlled House to renew financial and military aid to Ukraine was a stunning break by the Rational factions of the House GOP against the pro-Putin (and pro-trump) Irrational factions. It now becomes a question how long Speaker Johnson remains Speaker before Marjorie Trump Greene gets her revenge, and if the resulting chaos by a leaderless Republican caucus will grant the House Democrats to take the reins. How quickly the military aid - what we're doing is "selling" them existing equipment and buying up replacement am ..read more

When last we left the Congressional Republicans, they were happily sitting around a campfire singing "Kumbaya My Lord" ahem happily shivving their own Speaker - their second in a row - for actually allowing some legislation to reach the House floor, and for not being aggressive enough chasing after "Biden Crime Family" bullshit. Speaker(ish) Mike Johnson promptly called a week's vacation - which Congressional Republicans do every other week anyway - in order to find ways to pander to the Freedom Caucus even further, to the point where he made a pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago to kick trump's ring ora ..read more

Just a quick notice tonight that Bob Graham, former Governor of Florida and later Senator, passed away yesterday (via AP News):  Former U.S. Sen. and two-term Florida Gov. Bob Graham, who gained national prominence as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks and as an early critic of the Iraq war, has died. He was 87... Graham, who served three terms in the Senate, made an unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, emphasizing his opposition to the Iraq invasion. But his bid was delayed by heart surgery in January ..read more

IT'S HAPPENING. AT LAST. did the judge hold him in contempt yet? did the judge hold him in contempt yet? did the judge hold him in contempt yet? did the judge hold him in contempt yet? did the judge hold him in contempt yet? did the judge hold him in contempt yet? did the judge... #trumptrial — Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) April 15, 2024 Ahem. Today is the pre-trial stuff, where the judge is setting out the parameters of what evidence will get presented, denying trump's attempts at recusal and delay, and setting the calendar so that the Wednesdays are off-days (awwwwww). Not sure i ..read more

You might notice that despite all on the harrumphing from me about how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter that I'm still on there. Like spotting a car wreck on I-4, I can't look away and need to fulfill my Reply Guy urges. (Also, I want to be there when Musk implodes Twitter: Screw you, Elon, I'm deadnaming it 'cause calling it X is stupid)  Having mentioned how donald trump (lowercase-naming him) spent the past week filing last-minute legal appeals against the pending April 15th Manhattan criminal trial over his hush money payments, I had a Reply Guy moment on Twitter that I'd like to share on ..read more

Damn. While I'd been busy writing a previous article, it looks like the War between Israel and Hamas expanded to include Iran sending missiles and drones to strike targets in Israel (via Becky Sullivan at NPR): Air raid sirens sounded across Israel and the occupied West Bank and Israeli officials urged people to seek shelter after Iran launched dozens of drones toward Israel late Saturday night in an attack that marked a major escalation of conflict in the Middle East. Iran had vowed to retaliate after an airstrike on an Iranian consulate in Syria earlier this month killed seven Iranian milit ..read more

It's been noted that as the presidential campaigning shifts away from the primaries - it's all over but the tears - that Joe Biden's ground game is extensive and well-funded while donald trump's is... well... (via Peter Nicholas, Allan Smith, Vaughn Hillyard, Adam Edelman and Ben Kamisar at NBC News): President Joe Biden has been scooping up record-making donations and plowing the money into an expanding campaign operation in battleground states that appears to surpass what Donald Trump has built thus far. Flush with $71 million cash at the end of February — more than twice that of Trump ..read more

News broke today on the passing of O.J. Simpson. A sports celebrity from the early 1970s - a running back at a time when such players were icons - Simpson converted that fame into an acting career by the 1980s defined by his natural charisma. Right up until June 1994 when his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were found murdered at her place. At that moment, the United States - indeed the world - was falling into a strange new territory of instant media craving for stories, alongside the collapse of the Cold War shifting historical trends in unknown directions. We'd just ..read more

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know. -- Albert Camus, A Happy Death Facing an imminent criminal trial in New York for his hush money payments, trump isn't just getting annoying he's getting DESPERATE. he's getting his lawyers to file last-minute demands to move the trial venue out of Manhattan as yet another means of delaying the start, and he's trying to file a lawsuit directly against the judge to force a recusal. With regards to the venue, well this is how the upper court handled it (via ML Nestal at Raw Story ..read more